The Constitutional Court of Romania's jurisprudence with respect to „para-fiscal taxes”

An article of Juridice.ro

In the jurisprudence of the Constitutional Court of Romania, "para-fiscal taxes" are acquiring increasingly notable particularities, which makes it especially useful to examine them, given the absence of any regulation of the "para-fiscality" regime.

The concept of "para-fiscal taxes" appeared in Romanian public finance law through the reasoning of Decision No. 892/2012 of the Constitutional Court of Romania [dismissal], regarding the exception of unconstitutionality of the provisions of Law No. 35/1994 concerning literary, cinematic, theatrical, musical, folk, visual arts, architecture, and entertainment stamps, as a whole, and particularly, Article 1 paragraph (1) letter d) of Law No. 35/1994. The "para-fiscal taxes" are mentioned in a paragraph referring to a work by French authors:

"From the presentation of the legal regime of these stamps, the Court notes that they are not taxes, but special fees, called in doctrine para-fiscal fees, which take various forms—a fact that also explains their heterogeneous regulation. Para-fiscal fees, established under legal norms adopted specifically for this purpose, are those sums of money collected either by tax authorities or directly by the beneficiaries of the respective revenues, and deposited into the accounts of certain public institutions or other entities, whether public or private, other than local public communities or administrative establishments (see, in this regard, Pierre Beltrame, Lucien Mehl, Techniques, politiques et institutions fiscales comparee, Ed. Presses Universitaires de France, Paris, 1997, p. 35)."

Read the full article in Romanian on juridice.ro